Various Stuff
First off, Kevin Mosley’s first GameShark article is online today and it’s about Madden 07’s franchise mode. Worth a read.
My review of Vanguard should be online any day now. I gave it a B-, fyi. Closer to a C+ than a B…but a B- nevertheless.
I’m knee deep in PitchCar and BattleLore right now and seriously…if you have a kid anywhere from six to …18. Get PitchCar. Man, that game is addictive and a whole lotta fun. What a simple idea turned into a cool game.
BattleLore, perhaps the most popular board game going at the moment, has some weird rules that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around, but for a lite-wargame that tosses in fantasy units and spells, it’s definitely filling a void for me.
Before Dan goes insane about this: I watched American Idol tonight with Mary and that had to be the worst two hours of singing since the Osmond’s did that Christmas show back in ‘78.
February 21st, 2007 at 7:51 am
B-? Did you play any PvP? The PvP is an F-. And if it were my review I’d dock points for the game being released well before it was done — still regular server crashes, memory leaks that lead to crashes, poorly optimzed loading, half a continent (Martok) with a ridiculously small amount of content, wholesale overhauls of the attribute system and classes, etc. Just because most MMOs are unpolished at release doesn’t mean Vanguard should get a pass. Fail them all, I say. Also, minus points for the obviousness of the WoW cloning.
February 21st, 2007 at 7:59 am
Also, stupid level design. What is up with Kojan having mountains all around the coast and flat area in the middle? That makes no geological sense; it’s just an annoying method of forcing players to go along the route that’s been designed for them. Everything on that continent is just one big long obvious path with little tourist stops on either side. The path leads from easy to hard. It’s like the designer is beating you over the head with the fact that you have to go exactly where he wants you to go. The level-based gameplay (so you only go where stuff around your level is, other wise you die or stop advancing) only adds to that.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:15 am
Neil, I have to grade by the gameshark scale, not my own. The Gshark scale is really screwy. On the one hand, they wanted a basic letter grading system but they also want it to be similar to other sites so that it reflects properly on sites like Metacritic.
A “Gameshark B-” is roughly like giving the game a 70% score.
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:37 pm
A 70% is still being kind. I still can’t get over how willing SOE is to put absolutely broken products on the market. I guess when your customers are fanboys, your normal obligations to your consumers don’t need to be met. I can’t imagine how big the backlash would be if any other non-game business tried to pull this kind of crap.
Maybe they just wanted to kill off a potential EQ2 competitor…or maybe after pulling the same stunt with EQ2, they figure they have no brand loyalty left to tarnish.